Away from the Premier League our parks and pitches are starved of cash

Young players use the al fresco changing facilities at Chorlton Park, Manchester. Photograph: Howard Barlow for the Guardian

Manchester had its grand London outing on Saturday, 64,000 City and United fans paying £30-£60 per ticket to help the Football Association with its Wembley debts, Sheikh Mansour's City overcoming the Glazers' United in that gripping drama of delight and despond. The following morning, as the sun rose and the hangovers bit, those who actually play the game in Manchester emerged to find life, in a great, world-famous football city, still the same as before.

At Chorlton Park, two miles from Old Trafford where the Glazers have taken £350m out in interest, fees and bank charges since they took over United in 2005, there are no changing rooms for the 10 boys' teams playing their matches. The boys, aged from eight to 16, change in the open and pee in the bushes. Both Oswald Road and Flixton, whose Under-13s are playing on the pitch next to the bushes, are FA charter standard clubs, all their coaches qualified, Oswald Road running nine boys' teams and two for girls, Flixton 17 teams, from Under-7s to adult.

A huddle of parents, brothers and grandparents are supporting – behind the tape barrier the FA now requires at this level, with "respect" written across it. Out on these blighted fields the parents must mind their manners. Paul Woodcock, watching his son, Lewis, 12, play for Flixton, thinks for a minute. "No," he says, "I don't remember anywhere with changing rooms. The other week we filled 13 bags with dog dirt off the pitch before the kids could play. The boys love the game but the facilities are a disgrace – this is English football."

There is a wider significance, and some personal history, in the barrenness of Chorlton Park. Fifteen years ago, with some friends, I formed a team. We paid our dues (as well as our taxes and council taxes), joined a local league and played at Chorlton Park. We enjoyed the football but I considered the conditions disgraceful, particularly with huge money pouring into football at the top. Martin Edwards, along Barlow Moor Road, was well on his way to making £93m from his Manchester United shares.

In 1997 I investigated this contrast, between "football's fat cats" and the forsaken public playing fields, including Chorlton Park, in a book, The Football Business. That year the Labour government set up the Football Task Force to inquire into the game's commercialisation and, acknowledging the book's influence, it accepted the disparity was shameful. In January 1999 it published a report, Investing in the Community. It gave unanimous support to the Premier League's 20 clubs' continued right to sell their TV rights as one body, an anti-competitive privilege being challenged by the Office of Fair Trading. In return the Premier League, a signatory to the report, agreed to "make a minimum of 5% of income available post-2001 primarily for investment in grassroots facilities and projects".

The government said it would "provide matching funding" for that 5%, while the FA was to "set basic minimum standards for all football facilities".

It was the first time the professional clubs had committed to investing in local football facilities, rather than just scouting them for talent. The Football Foundation was formed to oversee investment of that slice of the Premier League's TV good fortune. With matched funding from the government and FA, the foundation has since spent £313m on facilities, around £700m altogether, including funding from other sources. A long list of pitches and changing rooms have been transformed nationally and, increasingly, new 3G facilities added, their openings often attended by Premier League stars.

Yet Chorlton Park and many places like it are unchanged. So long has passed that my friend and midfield partner from then, Richard Demby, now coaches his 13-year-old son Cal's Oswald Road team. They even received £150 from the foundation for their kit. "There is so much money at the top, City and United are rolling in it, but the facilities here are the same as they were 15 years ago," says Richard, 46. "We love our football but it is a scandal."

There are several depressing reasons why the disparity remains, 19 years since the Premier League's first satellite TV windfall, 20 years on Wednesday since Sky Sports was founded. The main one is, simply, the government's historic neglect in its publicly owned sports grounds. When the Football Foundation began in July 2000, it concluded following a national survey that £2bn was needed to improve facilities nationally. After 11 years of funding projects it realises this was a desperate underestimate; it says the £700m spent so far has refurbished perhaps a 10th of facilities, so in fact £7bn was needed.

Secondly there are some customary dispiriting disputes about who puts in what. The Premier League, which paid £20m to the foundation annually from 2001-04, out of a £1.6bn TV deal, is now paying less, £12m a year, even though its 2010-13 TV deal has doubled, to £3.3bn.

The Premier League has been able to make these billions, and Richard Scudamore, its chief executive, his £3.7m salary package, including £2.83m in bonuses over four years, because with government support it retained the rights to sell the TV rights collectively. Yet the Premier League says it never ultimately agreed to distribute "5% of income" to the grassroots, as it signed up to in the Task Force report.

Scudamore says when it set up the foundation, it agreed to distribute 5% of only the "domestic" – UK element – of its TV deal and was not asked by the government to include the overseas rights. The sales of TV matches overseas have now grown to £1bn from 2010-13 but Scudamore says that is exempt from the 5% commitment.

The Premier League also argues that the government and FA agreed to be equal funding partners and, as they have struggled to find the money, the Premier League reduced its contribution too. Whereas each paid £20m originally, a £60m total which, adjusted for inflation, should now be £74m, the Premier League now contributes £12m, the FA £12m, the government £10m – £34m in all or just over half the first investment.

The foundation itself says there was no written agreement originally which specifically excluded overseas rights. The former Labour ministers Richard Caborn and Andy Burnham both argue the founding principle was for the Premier League to spend 5% of all the income it derives from collective selling.

The Premier League replies that, while it has reduced the foundation's money, it invests more in community programmes – £20.3m for its clubs' social inclusion schemes, £3m internationally, £8.1m to the Football League for community work and youth development. It also distributes £56.4m to the Football League in "solidarity" payments – £100m altogether, 10% of its income. Keeping 90% is a marvellous outcome for the Premier League clubs, which before 1992 shared 50% with the Football League's other three divisions, but it is what the Task Force asked for.

The real truth is that the passionate support which has England's top clubs coveted by billionaires, and can spirit a whole city to London, has never been matched by the will to provide decent public facilities. And with swingeing government cuts to come, it looks as if we just had a golden age.

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